


Flower Language

by pseudocitrus



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 22:15:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3871690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pseudocitrus/pseuds/pseudocitrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaneki Ken, flower shop attendant, helps a new customer with some flowers and spots something strange just beneath the collar of her shirt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ok so one day someone mentioned a tattoo/flowershop AU to neimana and i couldn’t sleep that night and now...here we are. special credit to both [that anon](http://neimana.tumblr.com/post/116970977033/and-can-you-imagine-that-tattoo-artist-florist-au) and [neimana](http://tmblr.co/m72_-XOcOR-9HvRKFu_YrDg); i used some of her ideas in this!
> 
> (PS if you haven’t seen neimana’s tattoo/flowershop drawings [YOU REALLY SHOULD, THEY’RE BEAUTIFUL](http://neimana.tumblr.com/post/117500222528/firsts-touken-drawings-based-on-the-flower), though also they contain spoilers for this fic kind of, if that matters to you.)
> 
> hope you're having a great day!

“We should just close the shop on Fridays,” Tsukiyama announces one day.

“What?” Kaneki says. “Close up the entire shop? Why?”

“Because it’s _boring_ ,” Tsukiyama sniffs. “Hardly anyone comes by.”

“That’s not true! We — we get a couple people. Sometimes.” Kaneki coughs. “Anyway, spring is starting! I’m sure we’ll have plenty of customers then.”

But Tsukiyama doesn’t look convinced. He purses his lips at the calendar, taps a pen against his cheek.

“I can take Fridays,” Kaneki offers, and Tsukiyama frowns.

“You’ll die, you know. Of complete and utter boredom. I mean…wouldn’t you rather just spend the time hanging out somewhere? You... _we_ could visit a cafe in the new building down the street.”

“It’s alright, I don’t need to do that. Besides,” Kaneki says cheerfully, “dying of boredom doesn’t sound like so horrible a fate.”

Tsukiyama sighs and he marks Kaneki’s name in.

“If that’s what you want.”

:::

It _is_ what he wants.

Tsukiyama, though, is right. It’s boring.

It’s still so early in the spring that the weather is more cool than warm, and more rainy than bright. People race back and forth past the shop windows, not sparing a single glance. After watering and trimming the dead leaves from their inventory, Kaneki paces a bit, and then sits at the main counter and pulls out a book to read.

It’s not a new book, but it’s one of his favorites, as is made especially obvious by the fact that he has no idea a customer has entered the store until they are ringing the bell on the counter right beside him.

Kaneki jumps and claps the book shut.

“O-oh, I’m sorry — please excuse me —”

He looks up, red, and turns even redder when he sees the customer. They’re — they’re —

_Beautiful._

Short hair beaded with droplets of rain. Slender fingers that tug back a dripping hood, and unhook a headphone from one ear. A quiet, firm voice.

“I need some daffodils,” she says, and Kaneki swallows.

“R-right. Right. This way.” He stands hastily and guides her to the fridges at the back, where the freshest flowers are stored.

“How many would you like?”

“Just three.”

“Three…in a bouquet?”

“No,” she says. “Just three daffodils.”

“Got it.” He sorts through for the largest ones as she waits.

“You’re lucky,” Kaneki remarks. “These guys all just came in today. I noticed they’re all especially fragrant, too.”

She frowns at him. “Daffodils have a smell?”

“Oh, yeah! It can be kind of subtle sometimes, but…” He trails, and then holds the flowers up. She glances up at him, and then leans forward, and closes her eyes, and inhales.

Her jacket slips, a little; the collar of her shirt droops, too.

 _Don’t look,_ he tells himself, but rather than flicking away, he finds his eyes focusing, with astonishment. Following the curve of her collarbone is a dab of bright pink.

Is it — a scar? No, it’s — almost a pastel color — and the colored skin is perfectly smooth.

And soft-looking.

She straightens.

“It smells lovely,” she says, looking up at him with surprise, and Kaneki is startled into smiling at her warmly.

“Haha, yeah, doesn’t it?”

Did she notice?

It doesn’t seem so. Thank goodness.

“Is that everything?”

“Yes,” she answers. He leads her back to the service counter, where he binds the flower stems together with plastic and rubber bands.

“Thank you very much,” he says, bowing, and she —

She gives him a smile. It’s a faint one, dimpled at one side, and tinged with just a little sadness.

:::

After she leaves, he wonders at how incredible it is that someone with that much beauty exists in this world. He was fortunate to meet someone like her even once, and he’s astonished the next week to jerk up from his book and find her fingers resting once more on the service bell.

“Hello,” she says, tucking a headphone into the collar of her shirt, and he stands up, so quickly that his stool falls over.

“H-hello! Um, I mean, welcome to the store!” He pushes the book away and bends down to stand the stool back up. By the time he’s straightened, he is almost perfectly composed.

“More daffodils?” he asks.

“No,” she says. “Just…something. I don’t know. A bouquet of some kind. A normal one.”

She says it with a grimace, and Kaneki laughs lightly.

“Is something the matter?”

“No,” she says.

“Well,” she says, “it’s just…”

“No,“ she decides, with a sigh. “It’s nothing. Whatever. I just need one.”

“Alright! Sure! No problem.” They have some pre-made bouquets in the front of the store, but Kaneki leads her to the back instead, where flowers are arranged in a vaguely organized chaos.

“Do you have any color preference?”

She shrugs.

“I see. Well…” He looks around, thinking, and then, with a burst of inspiration, gathers a handful of small, trumpet-shaped blooms in pale pastels.

“Hyacinths,” she says, and he nods. He holds them up again, like last week, this time so high that she won’t need to bend to smell them. She shuts her eyes and breathes.

“Do you like it?” he asks.

“…yes. It’s wonderful.”

There goes that faint, sad smile again.

He bundles them together for her, this time with waxed paper and ribbon. He gives her one more extra than she pays for, though he doesn’t mention it, and he isn’t sure if she notices. She raises her hand to take the bouquet from him, and he can’t help notice her sleeve draw back, just a little, revealing a streak of purple just beneath the cuff.

In an instant it’s covered once more, gone, and she is gone too.

 _Maybe she’ll come back again,_ Kaneki thinks, as he waves goodbye, and the next Friday, when the shop door opens, he looks up from his book. Their eyes meet, and she grimaces as she tugs out a headphone.

“Sorry to interrupt your reading time again,” she says, and he shakes his head.

“No, no, it’s not a problem. I’ve already read it.”

“You have? But you —” She cuts herself off, and then decides to finish anyway. “You always look so into it.”

“It’s one of my favorites. _The Black Goat’s Egg_ ,” he says, and lifts the book to show her the cover. She tilts her head.

“Looks scary.”

“It, um…I suppose it is, a little. Though it’s not so much scary as it is sad. Anyway,” he coughs, “what about you? You’re always listening to music. I’m sure you’re not listening to new music all the time.”

“I’m not,” she confirms. She looks down, and then pulls the loose headphone out from her shirt and holds it out to him. He blinks, and then takes it, and tucks it into his ear.

The player is mid-song; he closes his eyes, and bows his head down, and focuses. He can feel her watching him as the music rises and undulates and after some time begins to fade.

“It’s…wow. It’s good,” he says, handing the headphone back to her. “Though it’s sadder than I expected.”

“Tragedies are great, huh,” she says dryly, and Kaneki laughs.

“So long as they’re only in stories. Speaking of great things,” he says excitedly, “if you’re still interested in fragrant flowers, we finally received some of the best ones.”

She follows him into the back again, where there are several bunches of star-shaped flowers growing in plump spears.

“Lilacs,” she says, and Kaneki nods and hands her one. She presses her nose into it, and inhales.

“It’s sweet,” she realizes. “And a little spicy too.”

“Isn’t it? To me it’s a perfect scent, especially given what it stands for. In flower language, lilacs represent the beginning of —”

“Spring,” she finishes. “And the emotions of early love. I know.”

He…actually hadn’t known that second one. He feels his face warm self-consciously, and is glad that she is too busy burying her face into the blooms to notice.

“You must like flowers a lot,” he manages, finally, as she picks out half a dozen.

“Not really,” she says.

“W-what?”

“I kind of hate them,” she elaborates. She hands him the lilacs, and he is too shocked to say anything more until he’s ringing her up.

“W-why do you hate them?”

She looks down. She pinches off a browned blossom, and he sees a flash of emerald on her wrist.

“It’s because,” she sighs, “they’re always dying.”

:::

Well, that’s certainly a fact. But at least it means that she comes back every week for more.

They get to chatting, for longer and longer periods; sometimes there are other customers, and she lingers wordlessly, pressing her nose against the flowers until he’s free for conversation. He loans her _The Black Goat’s Egg_ , and she makes him a CD that he plays on the shop speakers when he’s closing up.

One day, when he’s working a shift with Tsukiyama, Tsukiyama pauses his watering and stares.

“Kaneki-kun…are you… _humming_?”

“Oh, I guess I was. Sorry,” Kaneki coughs, “I’ll stop,” but he absently begins humming again no less than six more times that day, much to Tsukiyama’s confusion and suspicion.

“Where did you even hear a song like that?” he asks. Before Kaneki can answer, he continues: “Did…did someone show it to you?”

“Yeah,” Kaneki says brightly.

Tsukiyama clutches his chest. He isn’t paying attention to the plants anymore; Kaneki rushes and shuts off the water before he can drown the ones he’s currently watering. Tsukiyama whips the nozzle around.

 _“Who is it?”_ he gasps.

“You know, it’s funny,” Kaneki says. “I still don’t know.”

“Kirishima Touka,” she answers, when Kaneki asks that Friday.

“Kirishima-san,” Kaneki says. “Well, it’s nice to, um, meet you properly. I’m —”

“Kaneki-san,” she says. “I know.”

She points at his name tag. Kaneki scratches his head and laughs nervously.

“Please…just ’Kaneki’ is fine.”

“Then,” she says, “please just call me ’Kirishima’ too.”

“Kirishima,” he echoes slowly. “Sure.”

She makes it to her third Takatsuki Sen novel, and he to his third CD. Every time she smiles her farewell at him — is it just his imagination? It seems that every time she smiles her farewell, her expression has just a little less sorrow, and is even more beautiful for it.

They are getting closer, or so he likes to think — and yet there’s still so much he doesn’t know about her, and is embarrassed to ask. The fact that she needs so many bouquets, for one — and for two, the sharp, bright hues that peek out at him whenever she leans in to smell the flowers he gives her, little vibrancies of pink and orange and grenadine on her collar and arms.

They’re tattoos, probably, he thinks. But of what? Every time he sees her, the question reaches the tip of his tongue before he panics about bad manners and swallows it down. His curiosity becomes something he indulges only in daydreams where he is hooking his fingers on the bottom of her blouse, and inverting it over her bare belly and crossed arms —

“Why are you blushing?” Tsukiyama demands, and Kaneki coughs.

“N-no reason.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry about it.”

Tsukiyama frowns. “You know, Kaneki-kun, you’ve had the Friday shifts for a long time now. Recently you’ve seemed tired and distracted. Do you want to…you know…take a break? Switch for a couple of weeks?”

“What? No, no, That’s not necessary. I love the Friday shifts,” Kaneki argues, and though Tsukiyama asks him six more times about it, Kaneki remains steadfast. His flower shop shifts are the only connection that he has to her. At least until he can manage to gather enough courage to ask her out on a proper date.

This is the week. This has to be the week.

 _Kirishima,_ he recites mentally as he selects roses for her. _Do you want to get coffee with me sometime?_

There. That simple. That easy. No need for his stomach to churn about it, or for his hands to shake so much that the flowers are scattering dew on the counter. Kirishima tilts her head.

“Kaneki, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he says hastily.

“It’s…it’s just…” he tries.

“Kirishima,” he blurts finally. “Um, would you — that is, would you be interested in —”

The bell at the door rings. Kaneki looks up, at the same time Kirishima does. The customer that comes in scans the shop with eyes that are frighteningly dark. They straighten when they see Kirishima.

“Hey,” they call, and Kirishima waves back.

“Uta,” she replies. “Hey. Do these look good?”

She raises the bouquet indicatively, and the person tilts their head.

“Oh, yeah, I think they look great,” he chuckles. “I’m sure they’ll look really good on the, um, table.”

Kirishima smiles at him, broadly. The piercing on Uta’s eyebrow glints, and he raises his arm to scratch his long hair, and as he does his sleeve drops down to his elbow and reveals a forearm completely covered in dark, interlocking geometries. Tattoos — like Kirishima.

He is, overall, completely different from the type of person Kaneki is.

“L-let me ring it up for you, then,” Kaneki says quickly, with what remains of the breath in his body. He doesn’t spare another glance at either of them, not even when Kirishima bends over a bit to try and catch his downward gaze.

“Kaneki,” she says. “I’ll see you next week?”

“Y-yeah!” He makes a wide smile, not quite looking at her, rubbing his chin. “You know where to find me.”

:::

That evening, the spring weather seems especially chilly. He puts on a jacket and his cold fingers slip as he’s watering the plants, and he splashes all over himself. He curses, and trudges home completely drenched.

When he gets there, he lies on his couch and stares at the ceiling. After a while, he calls Tsukiyama.


	2. Chapter 2

The new customer sits on the seat, trying not to fidget as Uta asks her questions and then spends fifteen minutes just staring her up and down with his dark eyes.

“Daffodils,” he announces finally. “Three of them.”

“D-daffodils?” the customer stammers, wringing her hands.

“They’ll suit you best,” Uta tells them. “And, fortunately, we have an expert in-house.”

Touka doesn’t need to look over to know that he is smiling at her, and she knows that he doesn’t need to see her face to know she is rolling her eyes.

“You’re way better at flowers than me,” she protests when the customer is gone, and Uta shrugs.

“Just grab a reference somewhere.”

“I don’t even know where I can find daffodils in this area.”

“I saw a little flower shop a couple blocks over — ’Moon Mountain’ or something. Just buy a couple and I’ll help you design something.”

Touka groans, but goes, putting up her hood against the rain. The flower shop is tucked away against an alley and business is so slow that she has to get almost completely beside the store attendant before they notice her.

“O-oh, I’m sorry — please excuse me —”

His face is — not unattractive — but it’s also scarlet. She glances down to give them some privacy, and her eyes cross their nametag, which reads _Hello, I am Kaneki Ken._

He is strangely kind, and seems to care a surprising amount about the three plants he gives her. It smells really nice in here, too, and the fragrance is so strong it seems to follow her back to their new parlor. The daffodils look good on the front table, especially since the place is still mostly empty. She perks the daffodil heads up as she sketches, and even once their customer has come and gone again with their new tattoo, Touka keeps the flowers displayed. Every time she passes by she gives them a good whiff.

Over the course of the week she does her best to take care of them, and even so, they begin to droop.

“I _hate_  this. I always suck at it,” she grumbles, trying to tip the daffodil’s bloom up again. It would have been nice to keep his flowers for…well, longer. He’d been so happy about them, too. She bends down and inhales deeply, but can’t pick up even a tiny tinge of the smell that he’d showed her.

Uta is watching her.

“What?” she asks. “What are you looking at?”

“Nothing.” He leans back in his chair and smiles. “Why don’t you go back and get some more flowers?”

“Wh-what? Why?”

“It’s clear you like them, is all,” he says airily. “Plus, maybe having a fresh decoration like flowers will lure in customers.”

It’s obvious that isn’t the whole reason.

_He knows,_ Touka thinks with a skipping heart. _He knows about the flower shop attendant —_

_No. No. No way._ She shakes her head, fiercely. Uta is perceptive, but there’s no way he’s _that_ perceptive.

Anyway, so what if he knows about the flower shop worker? It’s not like he’s a secret she’s trying to hide.

Uta’s steadily growing grin makes her brows furrow even deeper.

“Fine,” she mutters, “I’ll get some.”

“Have fun,” he calls after her.

:::

Thereafter, she doesn’t need to be prompted.

_It’s my responsibility,_ she thinks. Flowers make the parlor look way more welcoming, and the fragrance gives wincing customers something to focus on while having work done.

“Since when does it take an hour to pick up flowers?” Uta asks one week, and Touka purses her lips.

“The attendant was busy.”

Busy talking to her. And listening to everything that she can’t stop herself from talking about to him, despite all her personal sirens going off and warning her to keep her distance.

“Hmm,” Uta says. “Maybe you should bring this very busy Kaneki-kun by sometime.”

Touka’s blood chills; she whirls around to face him. “How did you know his —”

She cuts herself off. Uta is laughing; he’s holding one of the books Kaneki loaned her, and showing her where Kaneki’s name is printed neatly on the inside cover.

“Seems like a pretty depressing guy,” he continues, paging through the book. “Are you sure someone like that is your type?”

“Give that back!”

He throws it to her and Touka catches it and searches for any extra creases in the binding.

“I notice some of my blank CDs have been missing too,” Uta remarks.

“I’ll pay you back,” Touka grumbles. She’d been too nervous about just asking him for an email to send music to. She worries too much, when it comes to things like that — a single day without hearing from someone and no matter how hard she tries she can’t stop herself from thinking stupid shit like, _They hate me. They abandoned me._

And she doesn’t want to stress out about things like that when it comes to him. He’s too easy to talk to — they never run out of topics — and, he’s fun to observe, too. Sometimes, when he is helping someone in the shop, she’ll pace around the store but keep within a good range to hear his enthusiastic advice about whatever’s in season. He could go on about flowers and books for days.

He is, overall, completely different from anyone that she’s met before.

“I’d like to see him,” Uta says, and Touka’s fingers tighten on Kaneki’s book.

“Fine,” she mutters finally. “Just don’t mess things up.”

“What? Why would I ever do something like that?” Uta unravels a sphere of chocolate and smiles around it as he stuffs it into his mouth.

There’s no reason he would ruin things, but Touka is nervous anyway, and can’t help her apprehension when Uta joins her at the shop. Uta has some strong opinions about people, and it’s a relief when they both leave.

“What do you think?” she asks, as casually as possible. He rolls a candy around in his mouth as he thinks, making it bulge out his left cheek.

“A centipede,” he says. “Definitely.”

That…wasn’t exactly what she was asking. And —

“That’s gross,” she snaps. “That doesn’t fit him at all.”

“Hmm,” is his only answer.

_A centipede is so unlike Kaneki,_ she thinks. And she thinks, _I bet he’ll laugh if I tell him._

She presses her face into her hydrangeas to hide the blush crawling across it, and finds herself almost excited when the days pass and they begin to take on rusty hues in the parlor’s vase. She heads back to the flower shop, and almost screams when someone shouts at her.

”Weeelllcooome!”

The person dancing toward her now is — definitely, definitely not someone she recognizes. They’re way taller, for one. And she sees immediately that the broad smile they have doesn’t quite reach their eyes.

“Hello there, _mon chéri_! Who, I may ask, are you? I mean —” He coughs. “What can I get for you?”

Touka takes a step back. Her heel nudges the door.

“W-where’s Kaneki?” she asks, before she can stop herself.

“Kaneki…? Ah, yes, Kaneki-kun. He’s not in at the moment.”

“Where is he? Is he coming back?”

“I’m not sure exactly where he is. And I doubt he is returning. He seemed very determined to give me all of his Friday shifts, so if this is the usual time that you drop by the store, it will be my pleasure to help you out from now on.” The attendant bows with a flourish of his arm. “Please, let me know if I can get you anything.”

_Kaneki…dropped all of his Friday shifts?_

It feels like her blood is turning into ice. The attendant is staring at her, and her throat is knotted, and it would be embarrassing to just run out of the store like she wants to, so she stabs her finger at the flowers closest to the attendant: a bouquet of lilies.

“Excellent choice! Come up to the register, I’ll package them up for you!”

Touka approaches the service counter slowly and watches as the attendant rolls the lilies roughly into paper. The lilies’ anthers are heavily laden with pollen, and the attendant smears and scatters it everywhere.

“So, you like our store? Do you come in pretty often?”

_Pushy._ Touka’s lips thin. She makes a curt nod, and they smile at her.

“You know, you have really beautiful eyes.”

“Thanks,” Touka mumbles. She holds out her hand, and they begin to hand her the bouquet — and then stop, and yank it back out of range.

“Ah? What’s that?”

His eyes are on her arms.

“You have tattoos?” the attendant gasps. “No wonder. That’s not Kaneki-kun’s type at all.”

It happens so fast after that.

Touka lunges and snatches up the bouquet of lilies, aims briefly, and flings them at the attendant’s face. She misses, but the attendant screams anyway as pollen shakes off onto their hair and uniform.

“What — _what is this_   _horrible dust_?! Get it off! _Get it off!”_

She storms out. Back in the parlor, Uta glances at the empty front table, and frowns.

“What happened?”

Touka answers by turning the sound up on her headphones.

:::

She _knew_ this would happen.

She knew it.

:::

The front table remains empty. Hinami eyes it as she returns for her color appointment.

“Still no flowers?” she asks, taking off her coat. “I was looking forward to them.”

“Sorry,” Touka tells her, without much feeling. “Don’t worry, I still know what color lilacs are.”

“I just liked the smell,” Hinami admits. She sits down in the chair, Touka cleans off the skin where Hinami’s lilac lines are. They’re right beneath Hinami’s first tattoo: three daffodils.

Touka traces them briefly with a gloved finger. She sighs, and begins.

:::

She knew this would happen, and yet she can’t stop herself from taking a route home that passes the flower shop. She allows herself only a brief peek through the windows, and never sees him. Uta doesn’t comment on their lack of bouquets, for which she is grateful.

One day, though, he rips out one of her headphones while she’s sketching. Touka jumps and Uta frowns at her.

“I’ve been calling you.”

“Sorry,” she says quietly, rubbing her ear. “What is it?”

He purses his lips.

_Don’t ask me if something’s wrong,_ she begs silently.

“I want you to stay later today,” he says. “Count up all the inventory.”

“ _All_ of it?”

“And put in orders if we’re below the threshold on anything.”

Well, it’s not like she has anything better to do.

“Okay,” she sighs, and Uta pats her head. He leaves, and by the time she’s finished with everything, the sun has already set. She fixes her headphones in her ears and locks up.

The only thing thing running low was Uta’s stock of candy, and she heads down the street to buy some. As Touka walks, her brows furrow. Something sounds wrong with her music, and she takes her hands out of her pockets and rubs her headphones. It doesn’t fix whatever’s happening; she pulls them out to see if anything’s broken.

With a start, she realizes that even though her headphones are out, she can still hear her song playing.

In fact, it seems even louder than before.

It’s coming from the flower shop.

Her pulse picks up. She races toward the windows, sets her hands up on them. It’s dim inside, mostly, save for a soft light emitting from the store’s back, and a shadow moving back and forth across the fridge doors.

No one else would be listening to this music.

“Kaneki,” she calls. Her voice is weak; she grits her teeth, and then makes a fist and begins knocking. Once she’s started, it’s easy to continue, pounding so hard that the “Closed” sign begins to rattle against the glass. The shadow stops, and then rushes. The music cuts off, and Touka steps back as Kaneki swings the door open.

“I’m really, terribly sorry,” he says, squinting into the darkness. “But this shop is —“

“ _Kaneki,_ ” Touka interrupts.

Kaneki stiffens.

“K-K-Kirishima? What are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here?” she demands back.

He steps back. “I…um, well…working here is my job, so —”

“I mean, here, at this hour! What happened to our — to Fridays?”

He looks away. “I…well, I…got rescheduled.”

“By that weird person?” she demands, hopefully.

“You mean Tsukiyama? Haha, he’s not that weird. Anyway,” he coughs, “it wasn’t him. It was…me, I guess. I rescheduled myself.”

He might as well have punched her. Touka squeezes her eyes shut.

_Leave,_ she tells herself. _Just leave._

She forces her eyes open again, makes herself look him in the face. When she speaks again, her voice is hard as stone.

“Well, I’m sorry. I thought — I assumed that you enjoyed it when I came over to bother you. Sorry.” She tugs at her sleeves self-consciously and starts backing away from the door. “You should take your Fridays back if you want them. I won’t annoy you anymore.”

She makes a smile, and turns, and leaves.

“K-Kirishima —”

She ignores him and starts to screw in her headphones.

“Kirishima, wait — wait!”

There’s a clack — a series of steps — Kaneki has dropped the broom, and has run after her. She turns as she feels a warmth against her hand. He’s grabbed her.

“Please don’t make a face like that,” he tells her. “I mean — I mean, if you don’t want to. I mean — I don’t know why you would want to. But I really don’t want to see you sad. Especially when it’s not your fault.”

He drops her hand. Touka takes it back, and hugs her arms to her body as Kaneki continues stammering.

“I just…like you. A lot. Too much.”

Touka feels her face warm, though she isn’t sure if it’s out of embarrassment or anger.

“Then — _why_?”

He rubs his forehead. “It’s just — the way I feel about you — it would have been too hard.”

“Hard?”

“Because…”

He waits.

She waits.

“Well,” he says, weakly, “because you have a boyfriend.”

“I,” Touka says, “have a _what?_ ”

Silence.

Kaneki’s voice is very quiet.

“Oh.”

:::

They pick up the broom and go back inside the flower shop so Kaneki can continue cleaning up.

“A tattoo parlor,” he echoes. “That makes sense.”

Against his protests, Touka holds a dustpan in place for him as he sweeps.

“Is that why you needed so many flowers?” he asks. “As reference? Or is it because your mentor likes them?”

Touka’s eyes are downcast.

“…yes, at first. I needed the daffodils as reference. And Uta doesn’t mind the bouquets, he says it gives the parlor a nice smell. But…”

“But?”

Kaneki takes the dust pan from her and puts it, and the broom, away. They’re done cleaning up; soon, they’ll leave the shop, and this will be the end of it.

Unless.

“But really,” Touka tries, “he wouldn’t have minded if I hadn’t brought flowers in at all. Mostly…mostly, I was coming by so that I could…see you.

“So,” she continues sharply, staring at the ground, “you should let me know when your new hours are.”

She waits. Kaneki laughs, and it feels like a sound she hasn’t heard in years.

“Kirishima,” he says. “I could tell you, but I think I’d rather not.”

She winces. “N-no?”

“No. I don’t want to see you only during my work hours.”

Touka looks up in surprise. Kaneki is checking the shop’s clock.

“It’s getting late today,” he says, scratching his head, “but...um...how about we go to a cafe tomorrow? I hear it’s a new one. It can be a…a proper date.”

His smile is so nervous and warm that she can’t help returning it.

“Okay.”

:::

It’s strange, at first, to see him without a name tag and apron. It turns out, too, that even when he’s not in the store, he smells inexplicably like flowers, from his clothing to his mouth to his hair. She can perceive it in the cafe, even over the aroma of coffee; it’s all that she can think about. It suffuses even his small apartment.

“You know,” Kaneki whispers. “Ever since the first day I saw you, I always wondered what was beneath your shirt.”

“I m-mean,” he says, “I mean, I always wondered — what your body looked like.”

“I mean,” he cries, “ _your tattoos_ ,” and Touka laughs and puts her hand on his mouth to stop him from speaking further.

“It’s okay. I’ll show you.”

He’s sitting on his bed, in front of her. She raises her hands to her blouse and undoes one button, and then another, revealing skin — and camellias and roses — azaleas and carnations — cyclamens, irises. They bloom across her breasts and belly, stretch across her arms in yawning color.

Kaneki’s eyes are wide.

“But you said you hate flowers,” he breathes.

“I…well. I really only hate the ones that die.” Touka folds her shirt up and sets it on his bed. She spreads her arms, then smooths her hands up and down her waist. “These are nice, but, they don’t have a fragrance like the real ones do.”

“Are you sure?”

Touka blinks at him in confusion. Kaneki swallows, and then reaches out, shyly, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close. He buries his face into her belly, and inhales.

“It smells lovely,” he tells her, and her face colors to match the roses on her skin.


End file.
